Make the most of a valuable piece of LinkedIn real estate

One of the wonderful things about LinkedIn public profiles is how few really good ones there are out there, leaving the door wide open for you to shine. Also if you're a business owner it's important to remember that your LinkedIn public profile is not your online CV. It's your shop window, your silent salesperson, and it should start selling your business and its products on the visitor's first click. 

At the top of your profile is a grey space with a little pattern on it. LinkedIn calls it the background photo. Most people don't know what to do with it. So they put a picture of their university there. Or them and their co-workers at a company function before the alcohol arrives. Or worse still they leave it blank. Which tells every person visiting their profile that they don't know much about LinkedIn or they don't care. Remember the old adage about a first impression?

If you run a business why not create a visual to place in this valuable piece of digital real estate that actually promotes what you do or sell? Here's what I've done with mine. I don't think it'll win a Cannes Lion, but within a couple of seconds the viewer knows what my company's name is and what it does for a living. It'll also helped me focus on who and what theB2Bcompany is as well!

It's so easy to do. Go to PowerPoint, create a graphic like the one above (without the mug shot), take a screen-grab (ideal dimensions are 1600 x 400 pixels) go to edit my profile in LinkedIn and drop it in. Voila! Straight away you're starting to look like a business that knows what it's doing.